LEGS MCNEIL is co-author of Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk, and is the coauthor (with Peter Pavia and Jen Osborne) of The Other Hollywood: The Uncensored Oral History of the Porn Film Industry. He was the former Resident Punk at Punk magazine, and a senior editor at Spin.
This interview from Brooklyn Radio - Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk was the first published work of its kind, and, despite a shelf life of close to twenty years, remains the ultimate guide to punk rock...
Ron and Scott Asheton were the nucleus of the Stooges, the greatest fucking punk band in the world. Having attended Fordson High School in Dearborn, Michigan, with Iggy Pop (né James Osterberg), the Asheton brothers were hoodlum types who attracted other punks with their erratic, wild behavior. As Iggy said of the Ashetons, “These guys were the laziest delinquent sorts of pig slobs ever born. Really spoiled rotten and babied by their mother. [Their] dad had died, so they didn’t have much discipline at home.”
By Alice Cooper as Told to Legs McNeil - I first met Alice Cooper at a party on Park Avenue in the mid-1970s. It was really one of those, “I’m not worthy” moments. Alice was one of the few guys I truly respected back then, because he’d made it on his own terms: by “driving a stake into the heart of the peace-and-love Generation,” and by playing delinquent rock ‘n’ roll for punks like me.
By Legs McNeilLegs writes a guest blog this week at VICE.COM
In my ongoing attempt to rebuild my vinyl collection, I was recently perusing a Brooklyn hipster record store and came across the new David Bowie album, The Next Day. I've been enjoying quite a few lesser-known Bowie cuts lately, so I decided to throw caution to the wind and really get wild. I bought the record.
This is a real feat for me, as I've never bought a record on faith alone. I'd been hearing good things about the record, and I was curious to hear what an artist like Bowie had to say at the end of his career or—if the rumors are true about his having cancer—at the end of his life.
Review by Legs McNeil - When I got out of my last rehab in November of 2011, I spent a few months on the west coast and when I returned home, I saw that I had been invited via Facebook to a party somewhere in Ohio for the release of the graphic novel, My Friend Dahmer by Derf Backderf. So I clicked on "going" in the appropriate Facebook box and really planned on trying to make the event. I mean, what else did I have to do?
My life was in shambles.
Malcolm McLaren will be remembered as a master manipulator who inflicted Punk on the world when he detonated the explosion that was the Sex Pistols—the most famous punk rock group in the world.
In my ongoing attempt to rebuild my vinyl collection, I was recently perusing a Brooklyn hipster record store and came across the new David Bowie album, The Next Day. I've been enjoying quite a few lesser-known Bowie cuts lately, so I decided to throw caution to the wind and really get wild. I bought the record.
This is a real feat for me, as I've never bought a record on faith alone. I'd been hearing good things about the record, and I was curious to hear what an artist like Bowie had to say at the end of his career or—if the rumors are true about his having cancer—at the end of his life.
